40 Unforgettable Movie Posters

Floating heads! Photoshop nightmares! Extreme camera mugging! We all know a lousy movie poster when we see one, right? But let’s not focus on the negative. Instead, here’s a collection of some of the most memorable, iconic, audacious, eye-catching, and flat-out gorgeous movie posters ever unleashed.

And so, in a rather stream-of-consciousness order…

(Note: many of the posters here were pulled from the amazing IMPAwards site. Check it out!)

Still one of the most horrifying images ever created. It’s so BIG!!

So iconic, that a few short months later it was sent up, to humorous and soon-to-be-legendary effect:

The subtle biting of the lip says all there is to say about the dirty, delicious cult phenomenon.

Va-va-va-voom! There were several versions of this poster for Gilda, but this one is my fave because it doesn’t feature Glenn Ford about to slap Rita Hayworth.

The beat-up stencil, thefire escapes, and the exuberant lovers combine to make this an all-time graphic fave.